Rainbow Sparks
by HeidiBug731
Summary: Olivander set out to make a wand that would produce the rainbow. He had no idea how incredibly long the journey would take nor how incredibly simple the answer would be. Written post DH.


Written for Reviews Lounge collaboration challenge "Rainbow Magic." Check it out.

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The shower of sparks that occurs when a wand meets its rightful owner is celebratory. Every wandmaker knows this. But I wonder how many wandmakers have noticed that each shower of sparks is a different color of the rainbow.

I've had several young witches and wizards come into my shop to get their first wands, and I've watched many showers of sparks. No two showers have ever been the same, just as no two wands are the same, and just as no witch or wizard is the same.

I remember the day Harry Potter came into my shop. The sparks that had flown from his wand were red. Now, I've see many showers of red sparks but the sparks from young Mr. Potter's wand were the most golden red I have ever seen. Neville Longbottom's wand had produced red sparks as well, but they had been so yellowish that I had first thought the sixteen-year-old had produced actual _fire_ instead of sparks. Nymphadora Tonks, hers had been red too, but so light and so vibrant that I had, at first glance, thought the sparks were pink.

I became interested in the sparks very early on as a wandmaker. I wanted to know why no two showers of sparks were the same (my own shower of sparks had been cerulean). What was it about the wand that determined the color of the sparks?

I threw myself into research. I was never good at keeping things organized, so instead of writing it down I memorized the length, wood, core, quality of motion, and spark color of every wand I sold. I tried to find some correlation between the first four characteristics of a wand and the fifth. When I thought I had finally figured out the equation, I would set to work on making a wand to produce a certain color of sparks.

One such wand (chestnut, nine and a quarter inches, brittle, dragon heart string) I had thought would celebrate its union with its owner in a shower of violet. But alas, the shower had been yellow - a greenish yellow at that.

With each failure I encountered, I would rework the formula. I was sure that a wand of hawthorn, ten inches long, reasonably springy, and with a unicorn tail hair core would celebrate in orange. But the celebration had been in green - a dark, silvery green.

And then Luna Lovegood entered my store. Now, her wand did something very funny. It produced sparks of bright, sunny yellow and pure indigo. Not yellow sparks with indigo mixed in or vise versa, but a shower of half yellow, half indigo sparks - two completely separate colors!

I was dumbfounded. Until the union of Miss Lovegood and her wand, every wand I had ever sold had only set off celebratory sparks in one solitary color, never two colors at once. The shower from Miss Lovegood's wand set my research off in a new direction. If one wand could set off a shower of two separate colors, could three colors be produced in another wand? Four colors? Five? Could one wand produce a rainbow of separate colors?

I believed it could, and I set out to make that wand. But no matter how hard I tried, no matter how I altered the formula, I could not replicate what Miss Lovegood's wand had done. Every wand I sold afterwards only produced one color. What was it about the wand of that young witch that had caused its unique celebratory shower?

The more time that passed, the closer I thought I was getting to the answer. But my research was put on hold when I was captured by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. This was both a blessing and a curse, for although I enjoyed no part of my stay in the care of You-Know-Who and his minions, I was joined during the last few months of captivity by none other than that young witch whose wand had sparked such fervent curiosity in my mind.

I got to know Miss Lovegood rather well. I found her to be insightful and wise beyond her years. She also had a very creative way of looking at things. And it was while I was thinking of how grateful I was to have her during such miserable times that I realized I had made one very crucial error in my research. The colors that had shot from Miss Lovegood's wand had not been representative of her wand's characteristics but of her own. Yellow: creative, expressive, and happy. Indigo: insightful, wise, and calming. The colors had nothing to do with her wand and everything to do with the young witch herself.

I had been trying to make the rainbow, and I realized then, in that depressive pit, that the rainbow can not be made. The rainbow can only be found. And I knew that I would never find it.

I had searched this long only to hit a dead end. Even a person so eccentric as Luna Lovegood only embodied two of the rainbow's colors. How was I ever going to find someone who embodied all of them? Who was to say that such a person had ever or would ever exist? I knew it was impossible, and I gave up all hope of ever finding the rainbow.

Decades have passed since then. I am getting on in years now and nearing my time, and I think of how strange it is that it was only a day go when septuplets (yes, septuplets!) entered my store and I had seven little heads bobbing with excitement in front of the counter.

The mother and father (while seeming slightly out of breath) explained to me that they had wanted to bring them all in separately but that the dear things had insisted on being together. I assured them that it wasn't a problem. I failed to realize how seven eleven year olds, all siblings and all feeding off of each other's energy and all eager to get their hands on what all eleven year olds want most when they gear up to go to Hogwarts, could be such a handful.

They refused to go one at a time and insisted that they had to try out wands together. At my age, I couldn't keep up with their grasping, excited hands. They started pulling wands off the shelves of their own accord, and I must admit that I did not try very hard to stop them.

"Give me that one!"

"I want to see that one!"

"Let me try yours!"

"Trade you!"

"Didn't I have this one already?"

"What about this one?"

"Pass me another!"

I sat down in one of the chairs reserved for waiting parties and participated in the siblings' wand choosing only by flicking my own wand when something was in danger of falling or breaking, which was often. The parents apologized to me once again, and I was saying that it really wasn't a problem when something quite miraculous happened.

The seven siblings all raised their wands, and when they brought their arms down, seven showers of different colored sparks shot from the wand tips: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

I couldn't move. I sat stock still in the chair while a chorus of joyous yells erupted from the seven children. The mother dug in her purse for some coins, but I told her quite sincerely that she didn't have to pay.

I hadn't found the rainbow after all; the rainbow had found me.


End file.
